Thursday, May 17, 2007

Ugly day

-47023600 shares

I lost money in the morning trying to pick a bottom to go long in CRM. Then I got stopped out numerous times when I tried to short VNO, BXP, PLD, and TEX. I kept coming up with reasons that the market would drop while I was holding my shorts. When the market was moving up I saw down ticks on every resistance level as a possible turning point.

I also broke my rule of not checking my pnl before the close. I saw I was down $300. I got into desperation mode near the end of the day. I basically gambled with 600 shares trades. I hoped and prayed that I would catch something. This is one of the worse situations to be in as a trader. The result was another $170 in losses. I hope I learned something from this. It was a good lashing.

Desperation

I was stuck in a view that the market would drop and missed out on easy setups.

1 comment:

Ugly is right. I'm down $90 today when a short failed. The second after I entered the position, it popped up and didn't look back. I covered .10 above, for a $90 loss.

What's killing me is I lost a huge opportunity in TNH today. I went to get a cup of coffee and 5 minutes later, the stock was $2 up. I kept watching it climb, climb, climb up another nearly $4 thinking it was going to reverse hard at any time (which it didn't). It would have been a great long position today. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20.Good luck on your trades, and thanks for the blog. It's a good read.

About Me

I have been trading for 5 years. It took close to a year before I became profitable. I find that I am improving gradually each year.
My method of choice is scalping. My edge lies in tape reading NYSE stocks and staying on the side of the specialist. That is the method I learned when I started. As I build up my capital I will try new styles and trade new markets.
In late 2006 my trading hit a rough patch after the introduction of the NYSE Hybrid system. For most of 2007, I have been on a search for new strategies that would help me adapt to the market.